The free world is the new continent in cyberspace that we have built so we can live here in freedom. It's impossible to live in freedom in the old world of cyberspace, where every program has its feudal lord that bullies and mistreats the users. So, to live in freedom we have to build a new continent. Because this is a virtual continent, it has room for everyone, and there are no immigration restrictions. - Richard Stallman -

Tux is the world famous and endearing symbol of Linux. I don’t know any other software mascot that is so loved and venerated other than Tux.

There are plenty of reasons for this phenomenon, but I won’t try to enumerate it here. Perhaps seeing my collection of "30 Coolest and Funniest Tux Icons" can somehow help explain why Tux is so adored. But first, some brief Tux facts:

The concept of the Linux mascot being a penguin came from Linus Torvalds.

Tux was created by Larry Ewing in 1996 after an initial suggestion made by Alan Cox and further refined by Linus Torvalds on the Linux kernel mailing list.

Linus took his inspiration from a photograph he found on an FTP site, showing a penguin figurine looking strangely like the Creature Comforts characters made by Nick Park. The first person to call the penguin "Tux" was James Hughes, who said that it stood for "(T)orvalds (U)ni(X)". However, many people observe that Tux is also an abbreviation of tuxedo, the outfit which springs to mind when they see a penguin.

Over the years, several versions (shown below) of Tux have been created:

Now, enough about the facts; I'm supposed to be showing you the "30 Coolest and Funniest Tux Icons", right? So without further delay, here they are:

Now where did I get all these cool and funny Tux icons? You can get it all at CrystalXP.net. There are currently more than a thousand high-quality Tux icons available there. Note that this is not a paid advertisement. I'm promoting that site for free for sharing to us these great Tux icons :)